Warning sent to Alabama's Democratic county chairmen: You are being tracked

Chris Cato is a videographer from the America Rising PACJoe Hubbard campaign

An advisory to Democratic county chairs has been sent, warning them of Republican-leaning videographers who are recording candidates at events, according to Herbert Kuntz, chairman St. Clair County Democrats and the author of the letter.

Kuntz had organized the meeting to let state Rep. Joe Hubbard, D-Montgomery, speak about his candidacy for Alabama attorney general.

But a videographer, known as a "tracker" in political circles, showed up to record Hubbard speak. Hubbard's campaign took pictures of the videographer, and identified him as Chris Cato from South Carolina. Cato works for America Rising LLC, which disseminates its videos through its political action committee, America Rising PAC.

The PAC is a Republican-leaning organization that seeks to research and record Democrats during this election season.

Kuntz told AL.com that he asked Cato to leave, but Cato became stand-offish, and said he would wait for the police to escort him out of the public building.

Kuntz told AL.com that he would not call the police, and that Cato was clearly trying to cause a scene.

Not so, said Tim Miller, the executive director of America Rising PAC.

Miller said the longstanding policy of America Rising is for the videographers to attend open events and become "flies on the wall," recording without incident.

Miller said the PAC started in March as a response to Democratic research-and-tracking efforts that kicked off with the rise of YouTube and viral videos.

"Frankly, this is something the Democrats were doing better than us," said Miller.

The rise of "tracking" kicked off with gusto in 2006, when a Democratic tracker caught Republican George Allen, an incumbent U.S. senator from Virginia, calling a Democratic operative with a video camera a "macaca," referring to the macaque monkey. The videographer was of Indian descent; Allen was accused of making a racist remark; and the video went viral, hurting Allen's campaign. Allen lost to Democrat Jim Webb.

At least one America Rising operative has ties to Republican Mitt Romney, who was famously burned in the summer of 2012 by a secret recording showing him telling a wealthy group of Florida donors, indoors at a private function, that there were "47 percent who are with (Obama), who are dependent upon government."